THE FRANCISCO BEAT
(In memory, Daniel Berrigan)
(Passed away May 2016)

Check it out
said the Beat
not on Wall Street
but in a shout out
on nameless avenues
when you remember
the peace marches
by St. Francis chapel
back on Boston Common
for us in enlisting Jesus
as a populist partisan
in honor of the God -man
of bonded resistance
during the war of Vietnam
remembering you this May
with a red rose of Sharon
by the Fenway's river bed
thinking also of Dorothy Day
with a delivering smile
as Fr. Berrigan has gone
to hear a heavenly song
in the Marian month of grace
we will remember you every May
for drinking from a cup
wellspring's pacifism and peace
when you told us the good news
that peace will be welcomed
some day soon
when even sectarian reviews
realized that war is wrong
thinking of our century
when proletarians were in poverty
and the toll of life in fascism
from wars of strife increased
in these cash wars of words
when a revenue of liberty
and freedom is decreased
when Picasso's doves are released
under the sun's bright rays
adding up the posterity summary
of the titanic resource of love
waging inside your wondrous spirit
and of Ted your brother- poet
we remember always
the cost of human life
in a wooden cross
no property has significance
as long as the eternal
poetry's song of children lasts
which gives us miracles
at the lights of canticles
when candles do not go out
from your ashes remembrance
do not age like cash deposits
offering us on earth
no moneyed insurance policy
will bring us to heaven
we ask a seven fold tolerance
for a legacy that will outlast
the King- Messiah's grace for us
a life not barren but are on course
in the prosperity of language
which we desire
will graciously live on.